There are schools, golf courses, public parks, movie theaters, and campsites maintained for their use. The millions of service members who live on military bases around the world experience a kind of economic and social security that isn’t comparable with any other working-class community in America. The military invests time and money in service members while making the maximum effort to keep their morale high. And although it offers less choice about what to wear or where to live than the private sector, there’s a baseline of care for service members that doesn’t exist in the civilian world. In the military, clothing, food, shelter, and medical care are guaranteed. And the contrast between the animating logic of the martial life and the gig economy says a lot about humans and what they need to feel fulfilled. As counterintuitive as it may sound, the military provides an alternative to the brutalities of modern economy. But perhaps the clearest example of a job that resists, at least to some degree, the vagaries of market demand is the military. Police and firefighter unions are too strong (and their work too dangerously complex) to imagine a near future of part-time contract workers with no benefits responding to armed robberies or industrial fires. Registered nursing is expected to experience nation-wide shortages until at least 2030, giving such workers bargaining power that helps them avoid being replaced.

adults struggle with joblessness, near poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives, a sign of deteriorating economic security and an elusive American dream.”īut a few jobs buck these trends by their very nature. According to a recent Associated Press poll, “Four out of five U.S. Real wages for workers have been stagnant since the late ‘70s and have actually fallen since 2007. As Bernie Sanders frequently mentions in his stump speeches, the top 1 percent of workers in America earn more than the bottom 50 percent combined. Economic insecurity is an important theme this election cycle.

Unspoken Abandonment by Bryan A. Wood